My name is Chris Goode and I am a security researcher with over three years of experience as a consultant for Microsoft. I am originally from Texas and moved to Washington State in 2019 for a job opportunity that changed my life. My experience ranges from 6 months working as a full stack web developer (using Angular, C#, and SQL Server), 2.5 years as a security researcher and malware analyst, and a customer service and troubleshooting background that spans back over a decade. I hold certifications in both CompTIA and Microsoft Azure.

The purpose of this blog is to document my thoughts in a sort of stream of consciousness with no real organization or planning! But seriously, it's been a long time since I've flexed my writing chops and I believe this will be a good exercise for me to start writing about technical things to an audience of varying technical prowess.

One of the things I want to start blogging about is penetration testing. For those who don't know, penetration testing (or pen testing) is the process of conducting tests on a system (such as a website, or a company's internal network) in order to find and exploit vulnerabilities. This is usually conducted by a cyber security expert (or a white-hat hacker) who then writes a report about their findings so that the vulnerabilities can be fixed before any bad actors find them and exploit them for personal gain.

I don't hold any pen testing certifications. My specialty is in "blue team" or defensive security, i.e. hardening of a network to protect it from malicious actors. Pen testing is part of the "red team" of these security exercises, or CTFs as they are called. I have never participated in a CTF but I'm working to acquire the skills necessary. I have an account on TryHackMe which I have used to do some "baby's first pen test" exercises.

So anyway, that's the post. I'm learning as much as I can about cyber security and documenting the process while improving my technical writing skills along the way. I'll be taking extensive notes while I work through pen testing exercises and publishing everything I learn here.